[page 16]
SOWETO AND THE FUTURE OF SOUTH The following article was written almost a year ago following the earth-shattering upring of the youth of Soweto in which it is now known at least 600 people were killed. But the events of the last year, especially those connected with the first anniversary of the rising, have completely confirmed the article's basic analysis. Since the Carter administration took over, US imperialism has begun to exert enormous diplomatic pressure on the South African government to relax their Apartheid policies, even threatening the possible use of economic sanctions. They are mortally afraid of the cataclysmic explosions that are being prepared by throughout Southern Africa. But despite promises of change and a few cosmetic reforms, there has been no real improvement in the position of the African and "The sense of anger, resentment and humiliation among the (Soweto) township's residents, which erupted after June 16th last year, has not been assuaged, " wrote Nicholas Ashford in 'The Times' (17th June, 1977): "If anything, these feelings have been hardened and become deeply felt...." For while the Nationalist government of Vorster has refused to concede even the possibility of majority rule, the events of the last year have enormously raised the political consciousness of the black population of the towns, especially the black youth. They have begun to be made aware of the tremendous power that a united AFRICA the Apartheid regime, with the possibility of an Coloured population.
black working class could wield. As a result of the student's action last year, the government was obliged to reverse its policy of enforcing compulsory Africans teaching in the schools.
This retreat, however, was accompanied by intensified repression against the student leaders and activists. The spokesmen of Apartheid have repeatedly claimed that the Soweto Students 16 "Angolan" development Representative Council (SSRC) is nothing more than a gang of "agitators" and "tsotsis" the (hooligans) with no support among majority of black workers. But the events of the last two or three months clearly show that the students have growing sympathy and support.
[page 17]
To mark the anniversary of the rising, the SSRC called a two-day strike in all the high schools for 16th and 17th June. They also appealed to the township's quarter of a million employed workers to stay away from work. On June 10th, police arrested Sechaba Montsitsi and 25 other leaders of the SSRC. On June 15th, the para-military police force surrounded the township with armed vehicles and men. Yet despite this huge display of force, the highschool strike was completely successtul, and at least half the township's employed workers stayed at home on the first day, with about a fifth staying out on the second day as well.
The SSRC called for a peaceful protest and commemoration rallies: they urged the youth not to respond to police provocation. The police had evidently been ordered to avoid the indiscriminate shooting of last year: but "by late afternoon the police appeared to become more aggressive and were using tear gas almost indiscriminately. They threw canisters into the Regina Mundi Roman Catholic Church, where the largest of the memorial services was being held, just as the congregation was leaving. They could also be seen firing tear gas from civilian cars into houses nearby.... " ('The Times', 17th June.)
The number of deaths and casualties in Soweto this June is not yet known. In the black townships of Kabah and Kwamobunhle outside Uitenhange near Port Elizabeth there were even more violent clashes when the police attacked peaceful demonstrators. At least six were killed and there were over 300 arrests Many Africans were subsequently sentenced to public floggings.
An even greater testimony to the militancy and heroism of the black youth were the demonstrations on June 23rd demanding; the release of those arrested as a result of the anniversary rallies. Thousands took part, and at least 500 African youth and students marched on the police headquarters in Johannesburg. These fearless demonstrators were attacked by police armed with batons and shotguns, and at least 146 young people were arrested. "Despite frequent attempts by the police to destroy the organisation (the SSRC)," wrote "The Times' correspondent, "it is clear from today's demonstration that it remains as influential as ever among the youth of Soweto." (24th June, 1977).
Far
isolated
older generation of workers, the youth of Soweto and other African townships increasingly express the anger of the already super-exploited workers at the worsening economic situation. South Africa's worst economic recession for 30 years inevitably hits the oppressed black working class hardest. South Africa has not been able to escape the effects of the world recession. The price of gold has continued to fall, while the prices of imports, particularly oil, have risen considerably. Inflation has speeded up, and unemployment risen sharply. Currently over 30% of the black urban population is unemployed.
In April, the government tried to implement its decision to raise rents in Soweto by between 40% and 70%. A campaign initiated by the SSRC forced the government to "reconsider" the rises.. The unusual restraint of the police in relation to the students' agitation on this issue indictes the government's extreme fear of an even greater upheaval arising from the desperate economic position of black families in the township.
Apart from the proposed rent increases, train fares to Johnnesburg (to which most of the township commutes for work) had been put up, and basic food prices increased. The Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce estimated that by May Ist the minimum monthly cost of maintaining a household of five had risen to R151.92 (£101.28). With further food price increases and sales tax increases resulting from the Budget, they estimated it would be R157 (£104.66) by the end of May, a 14.5% increase in six months, more than twice, the average inflation in South Africa. The Financial Times' (28th April, 1977) gave the example of a Soweto woman with an unemployed husband. She paid R11 (£7.50) a month rent (which would have been R16 (£10.60) with the increase). Yet her monthly income was only R12 (£8) a month! "Before long, " she commented, "people will say they are not going to pay rent."
The government's March Budget was strongly "deflationary" —that is, cut workers living standards-on the grounds of the weakness of the South African economy. Yet the same Budget increased arms expenditure by 217 to Rand 1,654 million (£910 million). This followed a doubling of arms expenditure in last year's Budget! Nothing could be a greater testimony of the regime's fear of political explosions. However much Vorster and company talk
about the "Russian menance", there can be no doubt that the state's armed might is overwhelmingly intended to defend the Apartheid regime against the African masses.
Commenting on the government's claim that the adult workers of the townships are not behind the youth, the Financial Times' recently commented: "There is no sign of their attempting to restrain their children." The 'New York Times' correspondent made a similar comment on June 14th:
"Some, led by practitioners of the old style politics of amerlioration, strongly oppose confrontation tactics, convinced that they bring bloodshed without tangible improvements. Others, taking their lead from the students, insist that only by challenging the government can blacks hope to gain freedom.
"Politically, the militants have gained the upper hand."
One indication of this, early in June, was the resignation of Soweto Urban Bantu Council (UBC) a largely powerless body set up by the government but staffed by blacks. Under pressure from the SSRC, and denounced them as stooges evidently reflected widespread feeling on this, all 33 members of the UBC resigned. The 'Washington Post' (15th June) commented:
"The implications of this spreading discontent among the blacks of all ages brings the possibility of widescale trouble ever closer....
"Dissidence among Soweto's adults could lead to what the government fears most: a labour boycott that would cripple this country's troubled economy."
It is precisely the fact that the movement of the students and youth in the African townships is preparing the way for the mobilisation of the black working class of South Africa, potentially the most powerful force on the whole continent, that gives events of the last year their enormous significance.
17
[page 18]
Soweto and the future Between June 16th and August 30th, 1976, police in South Africa fired 16,000 rounds of rifle, revolver, pistol, machine carbine and shotgun ammunition in their attempts to suppress demonstrations, riots and strikes by black students and workers. Since then they have fired a great many more. They have filled the streets with teargas; cleared them with baton charges, alsatian dogs and birdshot; they have banned , gatherings, silenced individuals, surrounded townships, set up roadblocks, stopped trains, conducted mass house-to-house searches, and organised armed gangs of strikebreakers and vigilantes. They have killed more than 600, seriously wounded thousands, arrested and imprisoned thousands more. 100 mis • Riot township!
Now Brighton CAPE TOWN Yet, despite this brutality, despite the use of the courts to inflict mass whippings: on demonstrators (one who was so treated was eight years old), despite the use of every form of intimidation and repression they could muster, the South African ruling class has signally failed to inflict defeat upon the working people.
The present wave of struggle is by i all accounts receding-but it has not been beaten back. It is possible to say with certainty that, whereas the violence employed by the police state at Sharpeville and on other occasions in the early 'sixties tended to demoralise the masses, the current 18 of South Africa even more savage police violence merely serves to harden their will. As the wave falls back, the tide moves forward, that is the dialectic of the present period, in which profound changes are taking place deep within the working class and in every aspect of the class struggle in Southern Africa.
The purpose of this article is to review the broad course of the recent events and the context in which they developed. It is not possible here to deal historically with the emergence of the present-day pattern of class and race relations in South Africa; a basic grasp of South Africa's history and modern social political structure will have to be assumed.
Nor is there space to examine more than one side of what has taken Montshiwi aflamman lasandra PRETORMA MAFEKING® •JOHANNESBURG douberiano BLOEMFONTEIN° EAST LONDON Mdanksaneo place-the movement into open struggle of the black students and workers. We hope, in subsequent articles, to discuss:
(a) The ruling class; the divisions within it, and the alternatives open to it in the next period.
(b) The position of the white workers, upon whose support the apartheid system, and ultimately capitalism in South Africa, depends for its survival.
Before looking at the development of the recent phase of struggle in more detail, it is necessary to consider briefly the background against which it arose.
By David Freemantle BEFORE SOWETO After the defeats inflicted on the African working class in the early 1960's, the blackest repression had set in. Not only were the political organisations of the Africans, Coloureds and Asians effectively suppressed and their leaders banned or imprisoned, but the government introduced measure after repressive measure, further tightening its security network, strengthening its military and police power, censoring publications, intensifying segregation, increasing its control of African labour and stepping up its efforts to root out all. vestiges of organised popular opposition.
During the ensuing decade the workers seemed generally docile. The economy advanced in steady strides. Between 1960 and 1970, the gross domestic product increased in real terms (based on 1963 prices), from R5,55l million to R9,797 million. During the decade an average growth rate of 5.85% was achieved. During only three of those years did the increase fall below 5%; in 1963 it was over 8%, in 1967 and 1969 over 7%. Between 1965 and 1970 foreign capital poured into South Africa at a high rate-more than R500 million in 1970 alone. Generally this was a period on which the bourgeoisie has cause to look back with confidence and satisfaction. Yet beneath the surface, physical changes were proceeding; all the more relentlessly in fact, the more the economy expanded. MORE BLACK THAN WHITE Between 1960 and 1970, while the white population grew from 3.08 to 3.77 million, the African population grew from 10.93 to 15.28 million (the total population of all the black groups increasing from 12.9 to 19.97
[page 19]
233-7
million over the same period). By
1974 there were an estimated 4.16
million white South Africans and
17.71. million Africans (a total of 20.73 million blacks). Thus, between 1960 and 1974, the ratio of black to white in South Africa had increased from approximately 4:1 to approximately 5:1. This trend will accelerate in future years.
These increases in population have been particularly marked in relation to the urban areas and, therefore, as far as blacks are concerned, in relation to the growth of the proletariat. In the whole of South Africa, whereas the total population increase between 1946 and 1970 was 87.5%, the urban population increased by 146.6%. Between 1960 and 1970, total employment in manufacturing rose from 644,000 to 1,024,000. A conservative projection of the increase of the African population of the industrial city of Port Elizabeth, for example, is that it will grow from 194,000 in 1972 to 316,000 in 1980.
Underlying these figures is the rapid increase in the numerical predominance of black over white in South Africa, particularly in the form of the black urban proletariat i.e., in precisely the form which most seriously threatens the stability of the apartheid system and the power of the white ruling class. In South Africa as elsewhere, in this as in every respect, capitalism produces the very means for its own demise.
RESERVOIRS OF CHEAP LABOUR
As the flow of African workers to the cities increased, so the measures employed by the regime for their control were intensified. The African reserves, always a reservoir of cheap labour power for capitalist mining and industry, were by this time hopelessly overcrowded; yet by the ruthless enforcement of the pass laws, the government crowded them still further as it drove unwanted Africans from the urban areas to the destitution of these rural concentration camps. In 1968, 1969, and 1970 alone, more than 1,947,000 prosecution under the pass laws took place. Many of those convictea were "endotsed out" (deported) to the reserves, foremost among them being the wives and children, those "superfluous appendages", to quote one high official, of workers forced to pass their working lives as "bachelors" in the industrial towns.
Wage increases during this period were minimal. (Today African workers for the most part still earn wages below or barely equal to the "poverty datum line", the index of bare survival). Even in the urban areas malnutrition continued at an alarming rate. (This persists today: in a recent study at a Johannesburg hospital for blacks, 58% of patients under 10 years old were found to be significantly malnourished, while of children up to the age of two, 80% suffered from malnutrition.
Such were the benefits derived by the working masses in South Africa from the long capitalist boom!
ECONOMIC CRISES
Although the relationship between the economic cycle and mass political activity on the part of the working class is, in the conditions of South Africa, a particularly involved one, the link is illustrated in the fact that the last great popular stirrings -those commencing in the late 'fifties and , culminating in the organised pass-burning, the widespread political strikes and the Sharpville and Langa shootingsaccompanied a recessionary phase, lasting from 1958 to 1961, during which the rate of growth averaged only 3.1% per annum.
Now, once again, economic recession has provided the setting for revolutionary events..
By 1970 the prolonged period of rapid economic growth had come to an end. Between 1969 and 1972 there was a falling-off in trade. In 1970, 1971 and 1972 the annual growth rate lowered relatively to an average of 4%. Although the economy picked-up again in the last quarter of 1972, the up-swing continuing through 1973, this was quickly overtaken by the world recession and a down-swing which in South Africa, has not yet "bottomed out"
AFRICAN UNEMPLOYMENT
Meanwhile, unemployment among Africans has been growing apace. In a study reported recently by the Johannesburg 'Financial Mail' (16th July, 1976), it is estimated that, while unemployment among non-Africans totalled only about 13,000 in April 1976, African unemployment has been rising by 22,000 per month. At that rate, argued the researcher, it would reach
2 million (or 20% economically active Africans) by the end of this year. (No official figures of African unemployed are kept.)
South Africa stand in the second rank of the industrialised countries. In 1970 it accounted for 61% of the total railway freight of the entire continent of Africa; for 47% of the telephones in use; for 44% of the motor vehicles. Yet even here, and even during periods of economic up-swing, the capitalist economy has proved barely capable of achieving growth adequate to accommodate the natural increase in the population. In a period of down-swing it proves capable only of social disaster.
A NEW PERIOD OF STRUGGLE
It was against such a background, after the long lull of the middle and late 1960's, that the class struggle began to assert itself once again in unmistakeable terms.
DURBAN STRIKES
In Durban, over short periods during January, February and
March 1973, 160,000 African and Indian workers in 146 firms went on strike, in a display of remarkable political and tactical maturity. By skilful organisation, hidden even from the ubiquitous police spies these non-unionised workers avoided confrontation with the state apparatus, refused to expose their leaders or appoint spokesmen, and yet wrung significant concessions from their startled bosses.
Although this wave itself receded, the level of general consciousness, experience and morale has been raised, and now communicated itself throughout the country. In 1973, 1974 and 1975 major strikes by African workers were reported also in other industrial centres. in September 1973 and again in April 1974, police shot a number of African mineworkers dead at the Western •Deep Levels gold mine, at Carltonville.
African trade unions, in Durban and other centres, made rapid progress and although action was soon taken against leaders, the organisations themselves were not (and have not been) suppressed. For a time the regime appeared to be reflecting, making its preparations carefully, and awaiting its moment.
19
[page 20]
MOZAMBIQUE AND ANGOLA The capitulation of Portuguese the anti-capitalist colonialism to guerilla forces of Frelimo in Mozambique in 1974 undoubtedly had a tremendous effect in advancing black working class morale in South Africa, and in providing for the first time in more than a decade a vision of the future in which victory over the ruling class seemed possible. These workers followed the civil war in Angola in late 1975 with the keenest of interest, having little difficulty (despite the smothering bourgeois press and radio propaganda favour of UNITA and the FNLA) in appreciating quietly that the MPLA was the progressive force among the three. Its victory had a profoundly bracing effect, reinforced as it was by the repulse of the South African invasion of Angola.
Throughout this period, hidden from the surface view, the regeneration of political vitality among the found echo among the veterans of battles past.
The underground networks, virtually dormant during the long political winter, began quietly to revive. Arrests under the security laws provided some public hint of the extent of new recruitment. THE REACTION PREPARES Under cover of the Angolan war, the regime was systematically preparing its counter stroke. Into the unending war propaganda against "imperialism" in Soviet and Cuban Angola, the strategists of South African capitalism began to knit dire "communist" subverwarnings of sion" al at home. Two principal enemies were identified: the organisations, chiefly of black students, pupils and older black, middle-class elements, who were espousing "black power" ideology; and sec? ondly, the rising African labour movement which "communists" were now said to be organising for their own political ends.
Thus the regime prepared simultaneously to deal, on the one hand, with the radical wing of the black, middle class (which was sustaining the most uncompromising attack on the Bantustans and the other puppet institutions that apartheid has devised as a sop to the black elite and 20 Defiant Soreto child sire black and a means of dividing the oppressed; and, on the other hand, with the emerging forces of the proletarian vanguard.
security legislation was introduced, empowering the government, inter alia, to imprison persons suspected of endangering state security for an indefinite without recourse to the courts, and providing a permanent inquisition of politicans to summon, interrogate and report. on individuals and organisations. The number of political arrests, reports of torture, deaths in detention, and ultimately polițical trials all increased. At first the activities of the security police seemed aimed particularly at the black nationalist organisations. Then the scale of interrogations and intimidations directed. at the African workers' movement rose sharply. Early in 1976 and then again in May and early June, arrests of some leading African trade unionists were made. It was clear that the fist of the reaction had gathered for a major SOWETO ERUPTS It was under these circumstances. that the class struggle broke into the streets in the form of the June 16th demonstrations by 30,000 black school-going youths. This outbreak itself was preceded by some five weeks of mounting conflict between pupils at a number of African schools and the government educaward-out delivery van tional authorities and police. As was soon to be explained in the sanctimonious liberal press, these preliminary clashes made the greater "predictones of June 16th etc., able"
And so they did. But what was not so readily foreseeable (nor was it in fact foreseen) was that a movement of pupils against the imposition of Afrikaans-medium instruction in the classroom—essentially a subsidary aspect of their oppression-would become the focus for the greatest general upsurge in the proletarian struggle in more than twelve years. Broadly two reasons account for this development. The first and most important is to be found in the processes at work within the ranks of the proletariat itself-processes which, under conditions of worsenjing exploitation, racial oppression and totalitarian restrictions, impel ever more sharply towards open struggle against the ruling class. Every partial demand, every particular! issue, once the masses have begun to move, immediately threatens to pass over into the most general struggle against the entire condition of working class life.
In these circumstances, obviously, the ruling class faces a dilemma and any miscalculated state reaction to a movement of the working people tends at once to raise the fempo of the struggle and broaden it to an Soweto's all-embracing form. In June events the conduct of the state, expressed chiefly in the cold-blooded massacre of school-children, provides the second basic reason for the rapid development of the mass
[page 21]
struggle beyond the initial, limited demands.
A WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT From the beginning to end the new wave of struggle has been carried forward by the working class-not at every point by workers, but at every point by proletarian class forces. Because Soweto's June events began protest on language issue, because it brought to the fore harrow nationalistic slogans such as 'The Black Nation is not the place for impurities-Afrikaans stinks!", many on the "left" (particularly those whose conceptions approximate to "Marxism", but no living link with the real movement of the classes) assessed this as a middle class phenomenon. This view was, of course, mistaken —not merely because it was shortly proved mistaken by the unprecedented political strike action of more than 500,000 African and Coloured workers themselves, but because, right from the outset, it reflected a mistaken conception of the revolutionary process.
Regrettably, does proceed according not 10 prescription, either in South Africa or anywhere else. Enormous combinations of forces, the criss-crossing of unruly and often contradictory currents, are required to bring events to that point where the masses take to the streets to declare or attempt to enforce their will. Nor do they enter the streets as one mass, all at one time, expressing one clear will. Only by looking beneath the surface of events, as they have unfolded in South Africa during these past tumultuous months, can we understand the real shifts that have ocurred in the relation of class forces and the enormous advance in proletarian consciousness that has taken place.
HOW THE CLASSES POLARISED That the black students of Soweto, Alexandra and elsewhere confronted the police in those early June days with strong petit-bourgeois influences in their consciousness is indisputable. But they were and are the chidren of the working class, of the most oppressed; humiliated and exploited section of the working class, perhaps anywhere in the The black proletariat in South Africa is subject simulataneously to the most severe racial oppression and class exploitation. Apartheid, rising as it has on the foundations of class rule, is a system of racist laws and institutions designed essentially to hold the overwhelming mass of the South African proletariat in conditions of semi-slavery.
For African workers in particular,. economic exploitation goes hand in glove with racial oppression. In the white oppressor, employing against them all the vicious powers of the apartheid state, they can see more more clearly the capitalist exploiter. The fact that Burne-out bus in Vosiosroos township oútaide Johar antagonisms and class contradictions so closely coincide results in a curious dialectic which was vividly revealed in the past months. In periods of relative lull in the class the overlay of racial distinctions tends to obscure the class divisions—yet, during periods of tumult, that same racial overlay tends to throw the class divisions into the sharpest relief.
This was clearly to be seen in the initial closing of ranks on the part of the ruling class; the polarisation of the upper and lower strata of the black petit-bourgeoisie; the movement of the Coloured workers; and the development of the whole course of the struggle towards a fonfrontation with capitalist rule. Although, in early days especially, the mass struggle swept forward under the banners of black nationalism, in every step that it took it moved att the more surely along the road of class struggle, towards class confrontation. This reflected. not only the objective forces at work, but the rapidly developing experience and political awareness of the black students and workers as well. The first shocks of the June 16th massacres set the, future course of all the major participants. As we have however, : aid, we have space lo examine here only one side of what has been taking place. The first reaction of the black classes was a show of solidarity, with even the right wing of the African petitbourgeoisie declaring itself at one with the people by denouncing police brutality and calling for urgent reforms.
But "unity"
this was exclusively on the surface. Beneath was sorting itself out decisively ón class lines. The students, instead of shrinking back from the sacrifice of their own lives, returned on the following days to redouble their struggle. year-olds marched with teenagers, while the teenagers turned ever more insistently towards the adult workers for support. The first police gunfire cutting its way through the ranks of school children, had brought down also the initial slogans and partial demands. To the front came new demands, new slogans; before long they read: "For Freedom we will lay down our lives."
Soweto was no longer merely the a dispute over school curricula; it was rapidly becoming a nation-wide focus of revolutionary This fact alone, coming upon them with such startling alacrity, caused the upper layers of the 21
[page 22]
African middle class to spring sharply to the right. This move was at first shrouded in verbiage, but no mere words could conceal it for long. The more the masses poured into the streets, the more the African traders, puppet politicans, chiefs, etc., slid over to the side of repression, their fear of their "own people" outweighing at every decisive moment their dislike of the racial oppressor.
At the same time the left wing of the African middle class, comprising in the main its lower ranks, rallied all the more strongly to the side of the proletariat. Thus, far from the revolutionary upsurge bringing "the black people" together "as one" , it has (as Marxism has always predicted) in fact polarised them fundamentally along class lines.
To see this more clearly, we must look briefly at the make-up of the African middle class and its positions in the class struggle as a whole. (These observations apply, of course, with appropriate modification, to the other black groups as well.)
41
DI AN
UR MI
TI
The African petit-bourgeoisie exhibits all the classic symptoms of an intermediate class trapped in the historic clash between a rising proletariat and an entrenched capitalist ruling class. In the peculiarities of South Africa's development, in which the naked class relations of capitalism have become. overlaid with racial and language divisions, the moventent of the African petitbourgeoisie reflects also its special condition as a class, or section of a class, suffering the oppression of apartheid.
Apartheid has the African middle class in a stranglehold, tightly restricting its economic and political development and subjecting it by and large to intense racial discrimination and humiliation, Its numerical: weight is small-the South African Official Yearbook for 1974 put it at a mere 60,000 families. These are arranged in various strata, the lower predominating overwhelmingly, while the tiny handfuls in the upper strata, having been seized upon by the regime as representative of "their" people, in fact represent only themselves.
22
As with the petit-bourgeoisie
everywhere, caught between the
hammer and the anvil of the great
classes, the African middle class in
South Africa is subject to acutely
contradictory pressures and tends to
move, especially in times of crisis, in
contradictory directions. The upper
section, that tied by property or
privilege to the ruling system, moves
into ever more open alliance with the
ruling class; the lower moves in
varying degrees towards the only
force capable of securing its
liberation-the proletariat.
The reactionary section of the
African petit-bourgeoisie in South
Africa greedily accepts the concess-
ions handed to it within the
framework of apartheid. Among this
section one find the Bantustan
politicians, Urban Bantu Councill-
ors, the emergent business and
trading elite, the chiefs and those
who (ordinarily by hereditary tribal connections) have achieved significant land-holding in the reserves. One also finds the likes of those who man the urban Makgotla system, adminstering savage floggins, supposedly according to tribal custom, to youthful miscreants.
All these groups, in varying degrees, owe their creation-or at least their survival—to the institutions, special privileges, licences, etc., emanating directly from the apartheid system. All • of them naturally enjoy the blessing of the government. In fact, for example, Kruger (the Minister of Justice and Police) is now proposing to afford legal recognition to the Matgotla groups so as to involve them formally in the restoration of 'law and order to the townships"
Snippets appearing in the South African press have given a clear enough indication of the behaviour of the reactionary section of the African. middle class during the recent revolutionary events. It has been reported that, at a meeting on August 8th at the home of T J Makhaya, Chairman of the Soweto Urban Bantu Council, it was decided that children who stopped any workers from going to work should be killed.
There is strong suspicion, stated in the press, that African petit-bourgeois elements, associated with the Urban Bantu Councils, and linked to Chief Buthelezi's Zulu "Inkatha" party, assisted the police in inflaming backward migrant workers in the Soweto barracks to go on a bloody rampage against students and strikers. (The influence of Inkantha is thought to account also for the
relative quietness of
workers during the
wave of unrest.)
Not surprisingly, this reactionary
sectión of the African middle class
received short shrift from the
aroused working class. Urban Bantu
Council members who met with
government officials during the
unrest refused to have their names
published, for fear of retribution
from below. Even Buthelezi, who
during the years of calm had so
skilfully managed to play the role of
secret radical, artfully manipulating
the Bantustan institutions in the
cause of black advancement, now
found it impossible to distinguish
himself from the other discredited
"homeland leaders"; all of a sudden
he became extremely reluctant to
enter his old stamping ground,
Soweto, for fear of assassination.
On 13th August the Johannesburg
'Star' reported that more than 200
companies had been asked by the
National African Federated Cham-
ber of Commerce (i.e. the organisa-
tion of African businessmen) to help raise R500,000 for the traders who suffered financial loss in the township riots. Next to Bantu Administration offices and beer halls (from which a major portion of revenue for government spending on Bantu administration is derived), these traders proved the prime targets for arson and looting.
Such has been the ferment that even the children of the reactionary section of the African middle class are turning against their parents. Bophuthatswana's Chief Minister, Lucas Magope, was doubtless distressed to find his 20 year-old son, Shimi, charged with sabotage-for having joined with others in buring down papa's Bantustan Legislative Assembly building in Montshiwa!
Far more significant among the tiny African middle class, however, are the elements who are drawn by the growing power of the black proletariat towards its side. Here one finds many of the teachers, and medical and social workers, as well as an assortment of radical individuals from many walks of life. There are, of course, various shades to their positions, into which we cannot enter here. An important section currently espouses a militant black power line, the influence of which, particularly in the early stages of the recent struggle was clearly apparent.
It is necessary to assess the nature of that influence and the extent to which black nationalism has secured a hold over the consciousness of the working class.
the Durban whole recent
[page 23]
"BLACK POWER" AND THE WORKING CLASS Because of the intense "national" or racial oppression suffered by the African working class in South Africa, it is inevitable that the slogans, etc., of black nationalism should find a certain echo among its ranks.
But it is important that we do not overstate the extent of the influence of blaęk nationalism on the African proletariat, and that we distinguish clearly the "nationalism" of standpoint of thę African proletariat, their class exploitation is the primary fact of life. The very institutions of apartheid (foremost among them the hated pass laws) press upon the African workers essentially as class measures, designed to maintain the slave-conditions of their labour. In years past, the mass mobilisation of the African working class in struggle against the apartheid regime has been achieved on the basis precisely of working class slogans and working class demands. Hence, for example, the heavy reliance on anti-pass law campaigns and wage demands ("pound a day" etc.) in the late 'fifties and early 'sixties. The African workers have not, in general, responded to the empty phrases of "pure" nationalism—nor have they done so in recent months. Their launching of political strike action in the aftermath of Soweto (after long weeks of slow, thoughtful stokingsignify any excitement among them over "black power" slogans. It signifies rather their half-conscious but absolutely decisive movement as a class, in the course of a near-revolutionary social crisis, into the role of the revolutionary force in society-the only force capable of achieving the national and the social liberation of the black Inevitably, a certain amount of racial feeling, a certain response to nationalist fervour, is current within the ranks of the black proletariat. But it is necessary to say of these workers what Trotsky wrote in another context: their nationalism is only the outer shell of an immature class consciousness.
On the whole, the racial feelings are stronger the less the worker's experiènce of factory life, i.e., the black perpite Police fire on less the worker has come face to face with the actual conditions of exploitation; has encountered state repression as an inseparable part of capitalist production; has experienced the connection between economic life of society and its political forms. It is largely for this reason that (among the working class in South Africa) "black power"
comes most readily to the lips of students-this and the fact that in the educational institutions radical petit-bourgeois influences are most directly encountered.
But when "black power" evokes response among workers it does so only in that IN PART it relfects A PART OF the experience OF THE BLACK WORKERS THEM_ SELEVES, It is not taken in holus bolus. When workers respond to a nationalist slogan they. do sólas nationalists. The worker interprets the slogan, gives it meaning, according to his proletarian perception of life. The less developed that perception the more adequate the slogan will seem. The more advanced and experienced the worker, the more clearly he percieves the makeshift character of "black power" as a weapon of the working class struggle-and the more insistently he demands an organisation, & programme, a leadership that goes For the radical African bourgeois, on the other hand, black nationalism represents the finished articulation of his own striving for liberation from oppressibn-but to him, of course, as with "oppression", so too liberation ("freedom") means something other than • it means to the working class. The oppressed petit-bourgeois conceives his liberation within the property relations of capitalism; for the liberation of the worker the overthrow of those relations is indispensible, the central task.
"Black power" has no policy on the burning questions of the South African revolution: the control of the land, mines and factories; the organisation of production and distribution; the class character of the revolutionary state. For the working class, black power can serve as no more than a vehicle for the expression of rage and frustration. It does not show the way forward. Despite its apparent gains in recent months, black power in the South African context will remain a force only as long as the black proletariat lack an independent leadership with a Marxist programme which proclaims clearly: "Our racial liberation, Yos!-fully and unconditionally-but our social liberation also!"'
class itself, distilled out of the life-experience of black | workers under capitalism. Black nationalism is, without a shadow of doubt, petit-bourgeois—no matter how "revolutionary" the form of its expression.
As we have said, the numerical weight of the black middle class in South Africa is small-but its influence in the articulation of political attitudes emanating from the black communities is disproportionately heavy. This is not at all surprising in conditions where, for example, the African working class is subject to such intense deprivation and exploitation that fe among its. numbers are fully literate. Almost 70% of African children leave by Standard Two (i.e. the fourth year of schooling), while only 5% reach 23
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Standard Six (the first year of post primary-school education). One finds among the African workers an understandable but unfortunate admiration for the educated elite and a confidénce in them that only experience, gained at great cost in heat of revolutionary the white events, will finally dissolve. Failing the development of a Marxist leadership and programme on the part of the proletariat, the black workers could well stagger forward behind the banners of black nationalism, a force capable of bringing society only to an impasse. Black racialism, under such conditions, could secure for itself a deeper hold. If so, the racial divisions within the South African working class will be reinforced and the stage set for a bloody denouement on a dreadful But the most fertile soil exists in South Africa today for the rapid advance of the working class beyond the confines of petit-bourgeois ideology and leadership. Already (we understand) the more advanced African workers are showing that they have little time for black nationalism. They are too tightly squeezed in the pincers of capitalism to be satisfied for any length of time with a leadership which fails to take up concretely the workers' exploitation as a class. Long sceptical of the exponents of "black power", these workers are beginning more and more confidently to challenge its formulations and to discern behind it the shadow of "capitalism in a black skin". In the development of these advanced workers we see the future development of the whole class. THE CLASS STRUGGLE IS INTENSIFYING The black proletariat in South Africa is the decisive force of the coming revolution. This fact, long understood and explained by Marxists, has been driven home with hammer-blows in the recent period. Needless to say, the black proletariat cannot conquer alone, except at the most appalling cost in blood and To the side of the destruction.
proletariat, under its own banner, leadership behind its and own programme, must be rallied all the middle layers in society-not least among them the forces of the radical section of the black middle class. (In a similar way, and for the same 24 reasons, every effort will have to be made to draw the white workers to the side of the revolution: but that is a subject of its own to which justice 'cannot be done in 'this article. In the past few months the struggle the black proletariat has put its enormous potential strength to Inevitably, under the viciously repressive conditions, the rising of the working people has been accompanied by a certain amount of destruction. But in that very destruction can be seen the groping of the masses towards action against the class enemy. In the direct action of the streets and townships, the popular rage rapidly turned to capitalist property of all We have mentioned the burning of shops and bottle stores. Company trucks and vans, too, were set alight by the score. More than half of Putco's Transvaal fleet of African commuter buses suffered "riot damage". Nor did factory premises escape unscathed. At one point Kruger was compelled to tell businessmen: "The day is past when people can sit at home thinking the police will protect their property. There are not enough police." By the end of September, the Johannesburg 'Star' was estimating total damage stemming from the riots at between R100 and R200 million.
But by far the most important developments have been the two three-day general strikes by African and Coloured workers on the Witwatersrand and in the Cape. More than half a million of them, largely lacking trade unions and without recognised leadership open organisation, united in directly political strike action that crippled industry and commerce in these two major industrial areas.
The struggle of the working class in South Africa has moved forward in giant strides. Enormous gains in confidence and collective experience have been achieved. When the mass action resumes, as it will do after only a relatively short lull, it will move forward from the outset at the higher level and consciousness.
A BLEAK FUTURE FOR CAPITALISM Capitalism faces future of a intensifying deepening crisis and class struggle in South Africa. The economic forcasts contain nothing but gloom: more unemployment, a real decline in gross domestic product, severe balance-of-payments 'The Times' Annual Financial Review gives South Africa's outlook for 1977 as "probably stagnation at best".
The rising power of the black proletariat has become the decisive fact of political life. The changing relations of all other classes and strata from this point on will more and more clearly reflect this fact. In the months and years ahead, the militant youth of the black working class will play an indispensible part in carrying forward the struggle. As they enter the factories, or join the ranks of the unemployed, their class-consciousness will deepen; at the same time with their militancy (already tested in the fire of an heroic struggle) they will infect the older generation of workers and prepare them for new battles. The strategists of capitalism realise all this, and know that the class struggle in South Africa is entering a new and more intense phase. Their statements reveal acute nervousness and pessimism for the The 'Financial Mail' of Johannesbourg (10th September, 1976) reports a strike the previous week by African bus drivers in Durban. The management, as usual, called in the riot police. The bus drivers quickly called off their strike and returned to work, saying they were frightened of the policemen's guns. Said one worker: "We were told to go into a big workshop, and when we got in we were surrounded by policemen with guns. The policemen even wore steel helmets. We were told we could choose to go to work or to go to jail There was negotiation. It is a sad day for us. We have no union to fight for us. What can we do?"
The 'Financial Mail', recalling the herosim of weeks past, asks plaintively: "When the youth of today have become the workers of tomorrow, are displąys of force like this going to get them peacefully back to work....?".
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